Hi,
I would be more than happy to assist you in setting up a study plan.
For establishing a good knowledge base, go out and purchase Kaplan's blue DAT book. It provides a good comprehensive review, especially on obscure facts regarding plant structure and phylum characteristics.
If you're really fortunate, try to find someone who has the Kaplan course books and note cards.
If not, don't fret, because the Kaplan blue book is word-for-word identical to their course books, minus some practice problems. I kind of wish I didn't spend so much money on the class, but their online course material was very useful, and sometimes pretty challenging. Unfortunately, there's no way to get that material without being registered in the course.
Their note cards, on the other hand, were very useful in reviewing commonly asked questions on the DAT.
If you can't get either the note cards/books, make your own note cards for each section in the blue book and memorize them.
It is not the best, however, for understanding organic mechanisms. For that, please visit:
http://www.chem.ucalgary.ca/courses/351/Carey5th/Carey.html. This is a searchable organic book, which has every mechanism drawn out.
I would recommend dedicating a good portion of your time reviewing the blue book, over and over again. I read through it like 5-6 times over the several months I was studying.
To secure your understanding of the science concepts, please go out and purchase
DAT Destroyer. Read over this book several times, as well, and make sure you understand every explanation.
For additional practice and real computer testing experience, please go out and purchase
TopScore. This was useful for the PAT, as well as all the other sections, because it's written by people who have written the DAT.
For PAT and math practice, please go out and purchase Barron's DAT book and ARCO's GMAT/GRE book, respectively. Know your trig identities, I wasn't tested on them, but you may be.
For the reading section, the only thing that I believe helped me do well was the fact that I spend a lot of time in front of the computer reading, especially news on
CNN and such.
If you get in the habit of having your eyes follow a mouse cursor, you can increase your reading speed dramatically. On the DAT, which was nice was that half of your screen was questions and the other half was the passage, which helped in finding quick buzz words which came up.
Also, before each passage you have the opportunity to read it on a full screen to become comfortable with the overall content and tone.
When I became a little pressed on time, I read only 50% of the full passage and hunted/pecked for the answers. It worked for me, but don't rely on it for everything.
When taking the reading section on TopScore, get into the habit of noting key facts/terms/names/dates on a separate piece of paper, and denote which paragraph they were in for quick reference purposes.
For the QR, please devote a significant amount of time finishing math problems in a quick and accurate manner. I can't stress that enough, they don't give you enough time to do all those calculations.
That's all I can think of at the moment, sorry if it seems kind of disorganized, I was just writing stuff as it popped into my head.
If you have any questions, please ask me and the best of luck to you.
Hi,
